


darlin' stay with me (cause you're all i need)

by skyesward



Series: it's always going to be you [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:13:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3121478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyesward/pseuds/skyesward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and so the hardest thing thus far to reconcile with is the fact that nothing in the world makes sense without her, not anymore.</p><p>skyeward + superhero!au</p>
            </blockquote>





	darlin' stay with me (cause you're all i need)

**Author's Note:**

> the one where skye & grant ward are a superhero duo that ends up falling for one another. he never gets back up. // the title is from sam smith's song.

He’s numb.

/

It’s the only word that can succinctly express how every part of him feels at the moment, and it’s the only way he can describe that look that has been etched across his features for days now, like he’s shocked and just on the verge of crying, and it’s the only word that can explain the fact that he feels as if he’s a robot, his gears turning, and his body moving, but his mind is blank apart from a painstaking constant replay of what happened twenty seven hours thirty two minutes and eighteen seconds ago. (but who’s counting, right?) He can no longer feel the soft tap of his heart, as if she’d taken it along with her to whatever better place she was at now, because the only constant reminder he used to have of its’ existence was her fingers lazily tapping the beat onto his arm when they were sat together, a constant rhythm that kept her calm enough not to casually cause tremors.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

He used to count time with their heartbeats. 

//

The stupid van she loved so much is now cleaner than it’s ever been before, because the only way he could ever take his mind off of the gaping hole at his side she used to be is to scrub, and scrub, until the motions become mechanical, and every single action he makes becomes out of instinct instead of desire, and the place is sparkling clean without him having to clean.

She used to hate cleaning. _It’s a waste of time_ , she would say, _I mean it’s not like we won’t mess it up all over again, right?_ And the rebuttal would be hot on his lips because he’s more than ready to combat this inane argument, but then she would grin, the smile where her eyes are twinkling and her lips are slightly parted, (he learns over time that this one, this one means she’s up to no good. he’s had to use his powers to get her out of sticky situations one too many times for him to forget.) and her eyebrows are raised in a challenge.

He’s never been one to resist when she pulls him in and nibbles at his collarbone, breath hot in his ear as she says,  _I mean, I can think of better things for us to do_ , and so the dishes go unwashed and the dirty clothes lie in a pile too close to the little kitchen area for comfort, and the one thought he can coherently form in his mind is,  _well, maybe tomorrow_. (he never ever imagines he wouldn’t have tomorrow with her.)

The memories play dangerously in his mind as he scrubs and he thinks that maybe this will erase everything, because maybe without her skinny jeans lying in an untouched laundry basket or her iron man cutlery she bought for a ridiculously expensive price lying in the sink it’ll mean that the thoughts in his head won’t revolve around a girl with hazel eyes and a crooked smile, and then maybe the dull ache in his chest will finally fade and the tension in his body will let go and he can finally fucking cry.

But he can’t. Because allowing the tears to fall would inherently be acknowledging that this girl is no longer in his life, no longer a part of him, and he’s long since forgotten who Grant Ward is without Skye.

//

The day after everything goes down, and he has to leave her there, his shirt damp with blood (her blood, he reminds himself) it’s been eight hours sixteen minutes and forty-two seconds when the first news alert comes through. She’d put herself and him down as google alerts on their computer as a joke months ago when they started working together, and neither of them really had the heart to turn it off. ( _I mean, what fun is saving the world if we don’t get recognised?_  She says it as a joke, but he knows deep down, somewhere in a little crevice of her heart she hopes it’ll ring through one day with an alert and someone would finally, finally, take notice of something she does.)

He allows it to buzz for a moment before he opens the laptop with the red blinking light, and he finds that the same headline is splashed across a few newspapers and websites.

(Local superhero Quake found dead.)

There’s sure to be elaboration in a few of the articles, but the only word that he seems to register is the word dead, and it he sees it like its bolded and in larger font than any other word on that damned screen and everything else seems to blur beneath it, and he squints because he wants to read anything but that, and when that doesn’t seem to chase the word away, he closes his eyes, but when he does, the only thing he can recall is the time in elementary school when they had to construct sentences from and define words in a little booklet.

(Dead.

No longer alive.

Complete; absolute.)

//

Numbers have always been his thing. When he was younger, and bored out of his mind sitting in a biology classroom, he would stare at the wall clock and his mind would go tick tock tick tock and he would get lost in the sheer simplicity and the basic rhythm that he tended to only realise the bell had rung when his classmates started gathering their things and make the most obnoxious ruffling sounds with their notes. 

He counted, because it made sense, because it never really, truly stopped, and he needed something constant in his wreck of a life. 

But he stopped counting when he met her, because she tapped, and she tapped for him and to him, all at once, and she became the constant he's always craved in his life. 

And so the hardest thing thus far to reconcile with is the fact that nothing in the world makes sense without her, not anymore. 

So he counts. 

(one two three four. 

one two three four.) 

It's been thirty four hours eleven minutes and twenty seconds. 

//

It's cold. 

He doesn't consciously register the very fact until he looks up and sees that it's fall and the very broken heater they own isn't at all functional, and it's only after that he realise his body is shaking with chills. 

But the soft shake of his hand at thirty second intervals and the cold wind blowing straight at him, ruffling his already rumpled hair just a little more, serves as a constant reminder that he's here, and he's regretfully alive, so he allows the situation at hand to remain stagnant because he's pretty sure he needs the universes' reminder of the fact. 

(How else was he supposed to remember that there was minimal chance of him waking up at any moment to the adorable little scrunched up face she makes when she's exhausted?)

//

He's been told that there are five stages of grief.

They say it goes denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, he’s told there’s acceptance.

He doesn’t think acceptance will ever be on the cards for him.

(it’s his fault she’s gone, after all.)

/

He did a paper on the grief phenomenon in a compulsory intro to psychology course a lifetime ago, but the only things he seemed to have retained in his memory were the few words that some psychiatrists determined would envelope every emotion he would feel.

They weren't enough.

No words ever would be.

//

He’s twenty two, and he has to bury his first. (his first love, his first best friend, his first everything.)

/

The dreaded task of informing Skye’s parents that her body has been found falls to the New York police department, and when his phone rings after fifteen hours eight minutes and fifty seven seconds, he knows who’s on the line immediately.

He picks it up, buries the sharp ache in his chest, levels his voice, and speaks. He expects tears, and anger, and a mourning father screaming at him for his lost daughter. He should have known better. The little she said should have conveyed more than enough.

They called to discuss the funeral arrangements.

The very words serve as another stab in the chest, digging deeper into the wound she left open. Even the thought of it hadn't crossed his mind yet. He supposes it's is still stuck on denial. Their speech is still, and their voices are monochrome, and he wonders for a moment if Skye’s even ever truly had family.

(she used to brush the topic off with a cheeky smile and a sincere _you’re my family_ on her lips.)

They start speak, and they never really stop, and his mind is anywhere but the floral arrangements or the list of guests or what fancy location they could better “entertain”.

He allows them to ramble on for a good twenty two minutes and eleven seconds, and it is only when it starts to appear as if their only desire to hold the funeral was to garner sympathy among their shareholders, he has more than enough, and to halt the anger bubbling beneath the surface to form into words he can never take back he cuts them off, his voice gruff as he makes up an excuse.

Her voice is saccharine sweet as she says _oh, of course, dear,_ and despite the fact that it sounds nothing like the one he aches to hear, some part of him still registers the familiar tone that lies beneath layers of feigned sympathy.

(the soft tinkling of her laughter and the delicate sparkle in her eye that used to come with it can’t seem to stop torturing him all afternoon.)

/

The wake takes place a hundred and ninety five hours three minutes and one second after.

It’s crowded with people whose names he’s never going to remember, because he’s far too fixated with the portrait of her when she was merely fifteen laying on an easel next to the closed casket they deemed necessary, and it’s like she’s there with him, except she’s really not. (she looks so, so young, and thinks that maybe that fifteen year old would still be alive if he hadn’t bulldozed his way into her life.)

(he doesn’t know she never would’ve lived if she hadn't met him.)

The ceremony is over in the blink of an eye, and her father gives a eulogy that reminds him of one a priest would give a man without family, and every moment he stands up there with meaningless words that will one day become all she’ll be known by, the anger he holds threatens to surface but he knows better and so he allows them to quell because this man was never her family, and he never deserved her.

(it’s just us against the world, alright?)

//

He sits at her gravestone for a good while after all the guests have dispersed, and his hands grasp loosely onto her favourite flowers. (daisies, she told him once upon a time. they symbolized innocence, and they needed all of that they could have living the way they did.) 

There are two lines inscribed clearly on the stone. They read: 

(Skye Johnson. 

Beloved daughter.) 

He never gathered the courage to request that they add the word  **fiancé**. 

/

That evening as he makes his way back to the van, (it’s no longer home, because how can anywhere be without her?) the sound of the thunder booming from a distance is reminiscent of the soft rumbling that the ground used to make when her hands got in contact with it, and the moment the distinct comparison strikes him is the very one where he finally allows himself to mourn for her, and although he insists it's for a minuscule moment, before he knows it, his tears are mixing with the rain falling and he's soaked and he’s rather sure he’s going to fall so sick but he couldn't care less. 

Because she’s gone, and he’s no longer numb.

//

So he stands there, his clothes absorbing all the water falling upon him as the minutes pass, and he closes his eyes where he's greeted with pitch black and he counts.

He counts backwards like he has too many times before, and it goes _sixty fifty nine fifty eight fifty seven fifty six_ and he can almost visualise the hands of the clock turning anti clockwise (tock tick. tock tick.) and when he finally lifts his eyelids he's greeted with a hazel pair he's since memorised and his lips tilt upwards for the first time in two hundred and one hours thirty two minutes and nine seconds. 

(her smile  ~~was~~  is beautiful.) 

**Author's Note:**

> this is meant to set up the world where this au will take place. this is both the beginning & the endgame & all the other chapters will depict their relationship from start to end.


End file.
